Case Study: College Forward achieves higher graduation rates with Salesforce Einstein

College Forward is driving graduation rates higher with Artificial Intelligence

College Forward is a Texas-based nonprofit that helps economically disadvantaged students enter and complete college, serving more than 12,000 students around Austin and Houston. Faced with the many nonacademic barriers that put students at risk of dropping out, the organization needed a way for its life coaches to quickly identify and prioritize the students who most needed intervention.

Using Salesforce Einstein Prediction Builder and natural language processing, College Forward turned six years of student records and counselor notes into daily risk scores that automatically flag high‑need students in coaches’ workflows and trigger targeted follow-up actions. The system improved counselors’ ability to direct resources, scaled into the CoPilot app shared with 40 organizations (serving 240,000 students), and helped sustain College Forward’s strong outcomes, including an 85% college graduation rate.

College Forward

Austin Buchan

Chief Executive Officer